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So with Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop Distance arriving on Nintendo 3DS next month in Japan (March 29th), it would seem the floodgates of new information have opened. Following the huge trailer shown at Jump Festa is an entirely new one posted on the official website just today. It's almost 10 minutes long. I'll let the trailer speak for itself. New characters (including a new younger form of Xehanort), more of the new worlds shown (Tron Legacy, Fantasia, Musketeers, Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc), new areas for older worlds, returning characters, weird unexplained plot events, the works. Not to mention a huge amount of gameplay shown. Tetsuya Nomura promised a game on par with the console titles in terms of importance and it looks like they weren't kidding. For fans of the series who are aware of the story, there's a lot going on here. Along with a lot of "what on earth is happening here?"

An international release is also expected within this year. Localization has already begun on it, so hopefully we'll see it somewhat soon (perhaps summer or before). In the meantime, the Japanese version arrives on March 29th. There's a bundle with a special edition 3DS that comes with the DS games Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days as well as Re:Coded available for Japan.

Also check the official site below, there's another new gameplay video in the system section. As well as other minor updates. As March 29th creeps closer, there will probably be yet more new information shown. But for now, kick back and enjoy almost 10 minutes of the new game!

- Many of the textures look kinda sloppy. I'm actually disappointed. I know the 3DS is capable of making a better looking game than that.
- Oh my god that frame rate died in a few places.
- It looks like Kingdom Hearts. Nothing really special there.
- The plot is sure to be convoluted beyond reason. Just looking at the trailer, I get the impression that they tried to do too much with the plot in one game.
- Why is Sora in what appears to be his Valor Form clothes from KH2?

Hopefully they fix those first two things to some degree before the final release. The Tron Legacy world, especially, made me cringe a bit. Quasimodo suddenly disappearing when he swung down wasn't exactly stellar, and the sword near the end of the trailer in what I presume to be the Notre Dame world just looked terrible. The cut-scenes looked great, but considering the power held in the 3DS, I expect a big name title like KH to go further than just a small step ahead of where Birth By Sleep was graphically, in-game. Those frame rate dips when a lot was going on were pretty obvious too. Once again, the 3DS is powerful enough, SE just needs to not half-ass it and actually optimize the game to some degree.

I sort of agree in terms of the graphics, but i will make a couple of notes. Textures have never really been this series' strong point. While the series has some very nice art design and animation, i wouldn't say it was pushing even the PS2's power. 3DS is obviously more capable than this, but so was the PS2. The GBA, DS, and PSP games were more in line with their respective system's capabilities. But really, the series has never been what i'd call a pusher in terms of visuals. It relies more on well done animation and pushing lots of onscreen models and flashy attack/magic effects than things like textures or more advanced shader effects like normal mapping and such. I will say i'd much rather the games look like they do now than go to the CGI style (which i'm not a fan of and doesn't work well with the Disney characters).

Overall, i really don't dislike the visuals. Minimalistic but i just find them charming somehow. Always have.

In terms of framerate, it seems to run somewhat better ingame than these trailers indicate. I don't know why, but the specific separate gameplay videos have far better framerates than this trailer. Specifically the videos in the system section of the main website. I think this may be related to their encoding process. I'm really not sure. But at any rate, i wouldn't judge it based on this trailer. Go check out the system videos (preferably with a browser that can handle flash without lagging, Firefox suffers from some amount of framerate loss for these videos whereas Chrome and IE do not for some reason). If it drops ingame, then there's a problem. But it doesn't seem to drop as much as the trailer shows.

I've stuck with the series since the first, and personally i don't find it confusing. I can understand why people might, but i just played them in release order and everything sort of clicked for me. I expect trailers to seem confusing though. This has been the case since KH2's early videos (heck, the secret ending of KH1 even). BBS' earlier trailers were also confusing as hell until the game finally arrived and everything clicked. We'll see if the game is confusing when we know everything though. No way of knowing at this point where the plot will leave.

Sora's clothes appear like this when he enters the dream world. Both he and Riku de-age one year in physical appearance and get new clothes. No word why yet. We'll see.

BTW, looks like things aren't looking too good for Sora at all. Game's slogan is "light falls into darkness, darkness becomes light", and the boxart portrays a rising Riku and a falling Sora that Mickey is desperately trying to catch. And in the trailer, it looks like Sora is asleep in one of the Organization chairs amongst all the forms of Xehanort. Looks like Sora is going to have a VERY bad day in this game, even moreso than in any game prior to this.

I've become rather attached to the series. I guess you could say i'm somewhat of a fanboy, if that wasn't obvious. I'm going into this game with massive anticipation but also a sense of dread that i haven't really experienced before for whatever reason.

There are three songs in the trailer. The first one is called Passion in Japan, English version of the same song is known as Sanctuary. It was originally the theme to KH2 and later 358/2 Days. Second song that plays during gameplay is a new one to this game, name unknown. Third is the orchestral instrumental version of "Hikari", aka Simple and Clean in English (theme for KH1 as well as others).

BTW, looks like things aren't looking too good for Sora at all. Game's slogan is "light falls into darkness, darkness becomes light", and the boxart portrays a rising Riku and a falling Sora that Mickey is desperately trying to catch. And in the trailer, it looks like Sora is asleep in one of the Organization chairs amongst all the forms of Xehanort. Looks like Sora is going to have a VERY bad day in this game, even moreso than in any game prior to this.

I've become rather attached to the series. I guess you could say i'm somewhat of a fanboy, if that wasn't obvious. I'm going into this game with massive anticipation but also a sense of dread that i haven't really experienced before for whatever reason.

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This is most likely a dumb/nonsensical theory, but maybe the Mark of Mastery exam is to see whether Sora can hold onto his good qualities/light even when in bad situations/when darkness surrounds him(Maybe his friends and Mickey play a part in that?), and whether Riku is able to rise once more to the light after all he has been through?
Its been some time since I last looked up something KH related so there's prolly a lot of things i don't remember which makes this theory worthless.
Or its just dumb in general D:

WOOOAAAAA!!
waves of epicness is crashing into my fanboy-mind,with axel/lea coming back there's a possiblity roxas will play another huge part,probably saving sora out of the darkness.
btw, who was the guy in the armor(ven's?)with the heartless symbol anyway?

WOOOAAAAA!!
waves of epicness is crashing into my fanboy-mind,with axel/lea coming back there's a possiblity roxas will play another huge part,probably saving sora out of the darkness.
btw, who was the guy in the armor(ven's?)with the heartless symbol anyway?

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If you're talking about the black guy in Tron world, I think it's Tron.

Click the Youtube page button on the player, and then enable subtitles to read dialogue in English.